South County Community Garden: Saturday April 12 planting up the garden

All those greens that were in the greenhouse in an earlier blog post are now in the field, with straw and drip irrigation lines laid down around them - that's about 10 rows of lettuce, beets (red, gold & striped), cabbage (savoy, bilko & gold), tatsoi (red & white), and a few other greens. The mustard greens we seeded in the garden are starting to come up, and the peas and onions are getting bigger. No sign of potatoes yet. The greenhouse still has herbs growing - the dill and cilantro is ready to be planted in the herb garden - and the many flats of eggplants, tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos just starting to sprout.

Science quiz: what do you call the first leaves of a seedling? Have you ever noticed how they look different from the rest of the leaves that grow later?

Answer: the first leaves are called "cotyledons." Flowering plants are divided into two categories: plants with one cotyledon are called "monocots" (like our onions, or corn) and plants with two cotyledons are called "dicots" (e.g. the tomatoes and mustard green seedlings shown below). The cotyledons are a very important part of the seed and in helping the seedlings grow.